Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Art Collector to Ellis Derby
Art Collector will use the Runhappy Ellis Park Derby on Aug. 9 as his final prep toward the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, trainer Tommy Drury told Ellis officials early this week.
Drury, based at the Skylight training center just east of Louisville, had considered training Art Collector straight into the Kentucky Derby off the colt’s victory in the July 11 Blue Grass Stakes before deciding to run in the Ellis Derby, a $200,000 race at 1 1/8 miles.
This is the first year – and perhaps will be the only year – the Ellis Derby is a qualifying points race (50-20-10-5) for the Kentucky Derby, owing to a revised schedule forced by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.
Art Collector, bred and owned by Bruce Lunsford, already has secured a Kentucky Derby spot after earning 100 points with his 3 1/4-length score in the Blue Grass at Keeneland. The Bernardini colt has registered open-length triumphs in all three of his starts this year.
“I just wanted to make sure my horse came out of the Keeneland race okay,” Drury told Ellis publicity. “Now that we’re back on the track and seeing him train, gosh, if anything it seems like he’s better. The timing of it is going to be good leading up to the Derby.
“That’s the ultimate goal, and we’re going to try to take our best shot.”
Other 3-year-olds in Daily Racing Form’s latest Derby Watch Top 20 being pointed to the Ellis Derby include Sole Volante, Dean Martini, Major Fed, and possibly Shared Sense.
The Ellis Derby will anchor the richest card of the 25-day Ellis meet. The other stakes are the Groupie Doll, Audubon Oaks, Juvenile, and Debutante, all worth $100,000.
Jones hangs up his tack
Larry Jones is best known to the racing public as the trainer of a Horse of the Year and three Kentucky Oaks winners.
But to insiders who have marveled at some of his practices through the years, Jones also is known as the 185-pound trainer who exercises his own horses. And that, finally, has come to an end.
Jones, 63, suffered nine broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a fractured vertebra after being thrown from an unraced 2-year-old colt he was galloping last Saturday morning at Ellis Park. Jones is ambulatory and back at work, saying this week by phone from the western Kentucky track: “That’ll be the last one I ride. I’ve gone out in style.”
In April 2014, Jones suffered serious injuries in a morning spill at Delaware Park and was placed in a medically induced coma. But even that spill and others had not deterred him.
“Every time I’d get hurt, all I’d think about was getting back up,” said Jones. “But not any longer. I’m drawing this as the line. I’ve looked for the end of that racetrack for 40 years now, but I’m done looking.”
Jones said he may train from atop a stable pony “or on the ground like some of the other guys do, I don’t know.” One of his more immediate concerns is getting two of his stable stars, Street Band and Istan Council, ready for the $100,000 Groupie Doll, one of five stakes set for Aug. 9 at Ellis.
Jones long has had a certain way with fillies. The Hopkinsville, Ky., native trained in relative obscurity for more than 20 years before winning his first graded stakes in the mid-2000s with Ruby’s Reception, Island Sand, and Josh’s Madelyn, all fillies. Then came his career benchmarks –
Kentucky Oaks victories with Proud Spell (2008), Believe You Can (2012), and Lovely Maria (2015). In the meantime, he also was the trainer of Havre de Grace, the 2011 Horse of the Year, as well as such standout fillies as the ill-fated Eight Belles, Joyful Victory, I’m a Chatterbox, and most recently Street Band, a Grade 1 winner last year.
“We’ve had a great run,” said Jones. “I’m going to heal up and be fine. I didn’t have a head injury this time, nor anything to cause me paralysis or longterm damage. I’ve been very fortunate.”
Six go in Friday feature
The featured event on a modest nine-race Friday card at Ellis is a $39,000 first-level allowance that drew six fillies and mares. Sara Sea, with Brian Hernandez Jr. riding for D. Wayne Lukas, looks like the horse to beat in the one-mile main-track race, which starts in the clubhouse chute.
The highlight of the threeday weekend is the $50,000 Good Lord for sprinters on Sunday.
◗ Through the first seven programs at Ellis, Rafael Bejarano leads the jockey standings with nine wins and Dane Kobiskie leads all trainers with five wins.
Bejarano was the leading jockey at Ellis in 2003 and 2004 before moving to California. Kobiskie actually rode one summer at Ellis, winning 42 races in 2005, before he turned to training in 2008.
◗ Go Google Yourself, winner of the 2019 Groupie Doll as well as two Grade 3 stakes in her 21-race career, has been retired by owner-breeder Samantha Siegel following a subpar effort in the June 27 Fleur de Lis at Churchill Downs. In all, the 5-year-old Into Mischief mare won seven races and $642,959, all for trainer Paul McGee.